


The Lonely House

by Eva



Series: Here there be monsters. [10]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-27
Updated: 2011-10-27
Packaged: 2017-10-25 00:12:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/269474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eva/pseuds/Eva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lestrade is off to rescue Mycroft who is off to rescue him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lonely House

*********

The door slammed. Greg jolted up, sheet falling away, and was on his feet just as Sherlock barged into the bedroom.

In the split second of stasis, in which he couldn’t move, Greg saw Sherlock’s eyes catalogue every detail of his naked body and the messy bed. Saw his face go white.

“Oh my god--Sherlock. Sherlock, come on--” And there was John, very much not looking at Greg. Tugging on Sherlock’s arm ineffectually. “Greg, I’m so sorry. Sherlock--”

“I must admit, it’s remiss of me,” Sherlock interrupted, meeting Greg’s frozen stare, “but I can’t think of a reason as to why you’d be wearing my brother’s ring, much less his bite radius.”

“Sherlock,” John said again, his voice low. “It’s not our business, all right?”

His brother’s ring. Greg looked down at his hand as if he’d never seen it before. Mycroft’s ring. He was wearing Mycroft’s ring.

“And yours is gone. Did you exchange them?”

Exchange--Mycroft was wearing his ring. Rage boiled up, cracked through his shock.

“You bastard!” Greg exploded, and stomped out of the room, Sherlock and John scattering. Mycroft was, of course, nowhere to be seen. The flat was clean. Bits of plants had been swept up and disposed of; dishes used in his preparations washed and gleaming on the counter. But the vase--the lantern, and the knife. These were gone.

“Lestrade.” Sherlock loomed at him from the doorway, and Greg swore again.

“Sherlock. I don’t have time to deal with you. Do me a favour and see yourself out,” he snapped, and marched to the kitchen doorway. No hint of a shimmer. Completely sealed up, and when he looked at the posts, the smallest scorch mark. “Oh, you snaky son of a bitch.”

“Lestrade,” Sherlock said again, closer and angrier. Whiter in the face, high colour in his cheeks. “You slept with my brother.”

“Usually it takes a lot more effort to get you to tell me the obvious,” Greg said, and slammed his palm over the mark. Nothing, nothing; not even a ghost of heat. “Fuck!”

“Why did you--”

“Would you shut up, Sherlock!” Greg demanded, raking his hands through his hair. “That’s none of your goddamn business, it has nothing whatsoever to do with you, and you don’t have to worry about it happening again because when I find your brother I will kill him!”

“I think we should be going,” John said quietly.

Kill him. Greg’s hands tightened in his hair. He was going to kill Mycroft, who was going to kill that creature, who was going to kill Greg, because Greg was Mycroft’s now, he absolutely fucking was, because Mycroft had fucking married him the night before. Had taken possession of Greg just as he’d intended.

Was Greg’s now, too, because marriage went both ways. What was Mycroft’s was Greg’s, what was Greg’s was Mycroft’s. And a creature who could otherwise hide in a space between its own thought and memory had gone and made a door, a shimmering silk line for Greg to walk into its space. For Greg and all that was Greg’s.

And Mycroft had a knife. Polished with his blood, silver and iron, iron that could enter its space. Because it was Greg’s.

“Mycroft doesn’t put this kind of effort--” Sherlock sneered as he said the word-- “into something he plans to abandon. What did you do?”

“Where does he live?” Greg asked, stopping short of pulling his hair out. There was a moment of silence, in which he was certain he could hear his patience shatter. “Sherlock!”

“What--why--” Oh, if he had the time, he’d enjoy watching Sherlock splutter, but there was no time. Greg straightened from his slump against the post, grabbed and shook Sherlock.

“Where’s his house?” he demanded. “He has one, doesn’t he? Has to. Where does he sleep, Sherlock?”

Sherlock’s stunned face, hands weakly circling Greg’s wrists. “You assume he does, then.”

“Don’t give me that,” Greg said, his voice low. It helped to remember that, when it mattered, Sherlock backed down. “I need an address. Now.”

Or maybe just when it could be worked around to his satisfaction. Sherlock searched his expression, then smiled thinly. “I’ll take you there.”

*********

It was large, and old, and unkept. It had high, shuttered windows, an overgrown mess of a garden, and moss growing over the walk. Not what Greg had imagined, when he thought of Mycroft’s human image. Ordered and restrained. Not what he imagined thinking of his less human side, dramatic and shadowed.

But there was a terrible honesty to it. This was a lonely house, one that didn’t believe in visitors.

Sherlock keyed a code in at the gate, and again at the back door, accessed through a set of sprawling, thorny rosebushes. “I should let you know that he spends more time at the office than here.”

“Thank you for that information,” Greg said woodenly. There were signs, here and there, of Mycroft’s less human defenses. Most of them fairly sparkling with youth.

“You have gathered that he isn’t here,” Sherlock went on, annoyance colouring his voice. “He hasn’t been here for two days, I would judge.”

“Not through the back door,” Greg muttered, and pushed past him into a dusty kitchen--not dusty because it was dirty, or unused, but dusty in that way old buildings become, age settling around like blanket. Exposed brick in the walls and thick wood cabinets. The sink a bright, surprising steel.

He had wanted to be human. Greg’s throat was tight.

There were still old gas fixtures in the ceilings, but Sherlock hit a switch for the electric lights, very dim and very soft. His face was still twisted into a bit of grimace, though John looked around with frank curiosity.

“All right, then,” Greg said. “Thanks much. You can leave now.”

Sherlock’s face twisted further. “Have you been ingesting lead?”

“You’re not going to wreck the place, or carve your name in the walls, or--” John stopped and ducked his head. “Right. Sorry.”

Greg moved on, into the dark, narrow hallway that led straight through to a wide foyer, with doors leading off to various rooms. Weak sunlight trickled in through thick glass, and the dull ticking of a clock seemed to score every second into the wood.

“Lestrade,” Sherlock said forcefully, coming up behind him silently. “What are you looking for?”

A way in. Greg peered around a heavy set of double doors into a wide, grey room, walls off-white and tall. The light leaking in through the shutters falling gently on a piano. It seemed that music still hung in the air, and that was it, wasn’t it? Proof, that Mycroft was something else entirely.

Greg had spent a lifetime one foot in another world, a world that was thin and shaky, depending on its closest dreamer for shape and hue. None of them had known music. Half the sound in his childhood escape to London had been his own harsh breath, his own heart beating fit to burst his ear drums.

And a small door leading off into another room, and the tell-tale shimmer. The ring on his hand burned cold.

“Lestrade.” Sherlock’s warm, insistent hand on his shoulder. His vision almost wavered; the shimmer becoming a weak line of sunlight until Greg shrugged him away. The house was holding its own, shaped to its owner’s mind and magic, but Greg didn’t dare let Sherlock any closer. He wasn’t sure he’d find another way into Mycroft’s head.

“Right,” he said firmly, and turned to them, Sherlock and John. So strangely ordinary in such an extraordinary place. “You two, check upstairs. Tell me if you notice anything.”

“Anything like--what?” John asked. His eyes were drawn past Greg again to the piano. “Does he actually play?”

“Poorly,” Sherlock muttered, and at Greg’s glare flared up again. “He’s entirely mechanical! Unless it’s some melancholy drivel.”

Because melancholy was something he could understand. Greg pushed Sherlock toward the stairs, included John in his glare. “Go on. I don’t know what I’m looking for. But I’m sure, whatever it is, you’ll find it.” The last said sarcastically to Sherlock, who sniffed and at last, at last began climbing the stairs. John followed, looking up at a chain that must have once held a chandelier.

Greg watched them until Sherlock had reached the top, then turned back to the grey room. Rubbed the ring on his finger. A cloud had drifted over the sun, but now drifted wide. The shimmer hung bright between the posts.

He had no weapons to bring. But that had never stopped him.

*********

fin


End file.
